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Tearing down small dams to restore rivers

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There are more than 31,000 dams in the northeastern United States.  More than 4,000 of them are in the Hudson River watershed.  Most of these dams are quite small and were built in the 19th century to form ponds and to power grist, textile, paper, saw, and other kinds of mills as the region developed its industrial infrastructure.  The nonprofit organization American Rivers estimates that 85% of U.S. dams are unnecessary at best and pose risks to public safety at worst. 

Dam removals have been occurring for over 100 years, but the vast majority have taken place since the mid-2010s and have increased dramatically since the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided funding for such projects.

So far, 806 Northeastern dams have come down and hundreds more are in the pipeline.

Dam removals improve aquatic fish passage, water quality, watershed resilience, and habitat for all the organisms in river ecosystem food chains, ranging from insects to fish to otters to eagles.  Small dams have degraded habitat and altered downstream hydrology and sediment flows.  They have created warm, stagnant, low-oxygen pools that trigger algal blooms and favor invasive species.

But removing even small dams is not an easy matter.  Projects range in cost from $100,000 to $3 million and qualifying for funding – whether federal or state – requires projects to meet a variety of requirements including community support.  Not all dams can be removed, but many more should.

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How Tearing Down Small Dams Is Helping Restore Northeast Rivers

Photo, posted September 20, 2010, courtesy of Doug Kerr via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Rats and climate change

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Human activity has made rats one of the most prolific mammals on the planet. Our waste, buildings, and ships provide food, shelter, and transport.  In the United States alone, rats cost the country approximately $27 billion each year in damage to infrastructure, crops, and contaminated food supplies. Additionally, rats carry and spread over 50 zoonotic pathogens and parasites, impacting public health around the world.

Now, climate change is adding to the problem. According to a new study recently published in the journal Science Advances, urban rat populations are exploding as global temperatures rise.  The researchers found that Washington DC, San Francisco, Toronto, New York City, and Amsterdam had the greatest population increases.  In fact, over the past decade, rats increased by a whopping 390% in Washington DC, 300% in San Francisco, 186% in Toronto, and 162% in New York City.  The study, which examined data from 16 cities globally, found that 11 of them showed significant increases in rat numbers.

Only Tokyo, Louisville, and New Orleans bucked the trend with declining rat numbers.

According to the researchers, the best pest management strategies involve making the urban environment less rat-friendly as opposed to removing rodents that are already there.  An example would be putting trash in containers instead of bags on the street. 

There aren’t many perks to the changing climate – unless, of course, you’re a rat. 

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Increasing rat numbers in cities are linked to climate warming, urbanization, and human population

‘Perfect rat storm’: urban rodent numbers soar as the climate heats, study finds

Photo, posted September 25, 2018, courtesy of Tim Felce via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Vertical-axis wind turbines

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Nearly all wind turbines in use today are horizonal axis wind turbines.  They are a familiar sight with their three giant rotor blades spinning about an axis high above the ground attached to a nacelle containing the gearbox and generator. 

A vertical-axis wind turbine has its rotor shaft transverse to the wind; that is, the shaft rises up from the ground and the gearbox and generator are located close to the ground.

This type of wind turbine does not need to be pointed into the wind, which eliminates the need for wind-sensing and orienting mechanisms.  It is also considerably quieter in operation than horizontal axis wind turbines.  Vertical-axis wind turbines have enjoyed minimal success to date because of a variety of problems including reliability issues and complications related to how they respond to changing wind conditions.

A next-generation vertical wind turbine is going on trial in Australia as part of a research collaboration between Flinders University in South Australia and the start-up company VAWT-X Energy.  The 6KW prototype will be installed at a field site in Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula.

According to the developers, the new turbine design will be as efficient, or even more efficient, as existing horizontal turbines and will be able to thrive across diverse environments including being part of urban infrastructure where their relative quiet is a real advantage.   Such turbines would be more accessible for applications like off-grid power and sustainable energy solutions for small businesses and farms.  The developers claim the technology can also be scaled up for large-scale windfarms.

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Progress with new-look wind turbine

Photo courtesy of VAWT-X Energy.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Thawing permafrost in the Arctic

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Permafrost covers about a quarter of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere.  It stores vast quantities of organic carbon in the form of dead plant matter.  As long as it stays frozen, it is no threat to the climate.  But as permafrost thaws, microorganisms start breaking down that plant matter and large amounts of carbon are released into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide and methane.

Scientists estimate that there could be two and a half times as much carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost as there is in the atmosphere today.

Thawing permafrost poses various risks to the Arctic environment and the livelihoods of its people.  According to a new study led by researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria, Umeå University in Sweden, and the Technical University of Denmark, thawing permafrost threatens the way of life of up to three million people.

To identify these risks, the research team studied four Arctic regions in Norway, Greenland, Canada, and Russia between 2017 and 2023.  The research, which was recently published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, identified five key hazards posed by the thawing permafrost: infrastructure failure, disruption of mobility and supply, decreased water quality, challenges for food security, and exposure to diseases and contaminants.

These are present developments – not future dangers.  Global scientific cooperation, policy interventions, and investment in research are critical to mitigate the impact of thawing permafrost and address the broader consequences it brings.

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A transdisciplinary, comparative analysis reveals key risks from Arctic permafrost thaw

Thawing permafrost threatens up to three million people in Arctic regions

Photo, posted February 9, 2017, courtesy of Benjamin Jones / USGS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Native plants and road salt pollution

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Applying salt to roadways lowers the freezing point of water and prevents slippery surfaces, which makes it safer for people to drive in wintry conditions.  In the U.S., more than 22 million tons of road salt is spread every year. 

But road salt harms infrastructure and the environment.   In fact, road salt damages cars and metal infrastructure by accelerating rust and corrosion.  Road salt can also leach into soil and waterways, disrupting ecosystems, degrading soil, contaminating water, and damaging vegetation. 

In cities and towns, road salts often wash into stormwater systems, posing health concerns and challenges for infrastructure.

A new study led by researchers from Virginia Tech looked at how salt affects plants and whether certain plants could mitigate salt pollution. The research team studied stormwater detention basins in Northern Virginia, examining the impacts of road salt on plants, soils, and water quality in green infrastructure systems.

The findings, which were recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, found that the amount of salt present in green infrastructure systems does reach levels that threaten plant communities.  However, the researchers found that relying on salt-tolerant plants for mitigation is unlikely to be effective because they simply don’t take in enough salt.

Certain plants, particularly cattails, absorbed substantial amounts of salt.  But even in a basin densely planted with salt-tolerant cattails, only up to 6% of the road salt applied during winter could be removed. 

Plants alone cannot solve our salt pollution problem.

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Researcher studies the power of native plants to combat road salt pollution

Photo, posted January 22, 2025, courtesy of the City of Greenville, North Carolina via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Neighborhood geothermal energy

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Residential geothermal energy makes use of the constant, year-round temperature of the earth below the surface to efficiently provide both heating and cooling for a home.  In the summer, the cool earth beneath a house sits at about 55 degrees and can be tapped into with a heat pump to provide cooling.  In the winter, that 55-degree underground expanse provides a much warmer source of air to heat instead of the often freezing-cold air outside.  Geothermal systems are appealing because they use far less energy than other sources of heating and cooling.

Using geothermal energy to heat and cool buildings is nothing new.  But after years of planning and months of drilling into the ground, the first neighborhood-scale geothermal heating and cooling project has come online in Framingham, Massachusetts.

The project ties together 31 residential and five commercial buildings that share the underground infrastructure needed to heat and cool them.  This sort of shared geothermal system has previously been used on college campuses and similar places, but never before across a neighborhood in the United States.

The $14 million project, built by Eversource, broke ground in June 2023, and comprises 90 boreholes or wells drilled 600-700 feet underground. Approximately 135 customers are connected to the system, including low- and moderate-income customers, apartment buildings, a gas station, and a kitchen cabinet showroom.

A total of 13 states, including Massachusetts and New York, are considering pilot projects or advancing legislation that would allow gas utilities to develop networked geothermal heating and cooling.

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First-in-the-Nation Geothermal Heating and Cooling System Comes to Massachusetts

Photo, posted September 30, 2019, courtesy of Stephen D. Strowes via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Unexplained heat wave hotspots

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2023 and 2024 have been the hottest years since records have been kept.  But above and beyond the upward march of average temperatures around the globe, there has been the phenomenon of distinct regions across the globe experiencing repeated heatwaves that are so extreme that they cannot be accounted for in any models of global warming.

A new study by Columbia University’s Climate School has provided the first worldwide map of such regions, which have emerged on every continent except Antarctica.  Heatwaves in these regions have killed thousands of people, withered crops and forests, and triggered devastating wildfires.

These recent regional-scale record-breaking temperature extremes have raised questions about whether current climate models can provide adequate estimates of the relationship between global mean temperature changes and regional climate risks.

Some of these regional events in recent years include a nine-day heatwave in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southwestern Canada in June 2021 that broke daily records in some places by 54 degrees Fahrenheit.  Across Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, and other countries, the hottest days of the year are warming twice as fast as the summer mean temperatures. 

There is yet little understanding of the phenomenon.  Some theories related to destabilization of the jet stream don’t really explain all the temperature extremes observed.  But regardless of the underlying causes, the health impacts of these heat waves are severe, as are the effects on agriculture, vegetation, and infrastructure.  Society is not built to quickly adapt to them.

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Unexplained Heat Wave ‘Hotspots’ Are Popping Up Across the Globe

Photo, posted August 16, 2022, courtesy of Alisdare Hickson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hydrogen-powered aviation

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The transportation sector is responsible for about a quarter of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.  Most of the energy used by transport systems comes from fossil fuels.  The transition to electric vehicles – cars, trucks, and buses – is making a real difference.  However, the emissions from the aviation industry have continued to grow faster than those of other forms of transportation.  There have been increased efforts to develop hydrogen-powered aircraft, but the challenges are substantial.

Hydrogen can be used for aviation both as a directly combusted fuel, or to power electric fuel cells.  Its advantages are that its use produces no carbon dioxide, and, in fact, hydrogen produces more energy per pound than jet fuel.

A study by researchers at MIT looked at the prospects for hydrogen use in aircraft and what needs to be done to make it practical.  The biggest issue is that the extra bulk of a hydrogen fuel tank and fuel cells in a plane would have to be offset by weight reductions elsewhere, such as reducing payload (cargo or passengers).  This would mean there would need to be more flights, thereby reducing the gains made.  The researchers argued that improvements in fuel cell power and more weight efficient fuel systems could eliminate the need for additional flights.

The bigger challenge is the infrastructure for generating and distributing hydrogen.  There needs to be green hydrogen – hydrogen produced without carbon emissions – and the infrastructure for getting it to planes where it is needed has to also not produce substantial emissions.

The study suggests that the rollout of hydrogen-based aviation should start at locations that have favorable conditions for hydrogen production.

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Fueling greener aviation with hydrogen

Photo, posted December 20, 2016, courtesy of Dylan Agbagni via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Capturing hot carbon dioxide

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Decarbonizing industries like steel and cement is a difficult challenge.  Both involve emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide both from burning fossil fuels and from intrinsic chemical reactions taking place.  A potential solution is to capture the carbon dioxide emissions and either use them or store them away.  But this sort of carbon capture is not easy and can be quite expensive.

The most common method for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial plants uses chemicals called liquid amines which absorb the gas.  But the chemical reaction by which this occurs only works well at temperatures between 100 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.  Cement manufacturing and steelmaking plants produce exhaust that exceeds 400 degrees and other industrial processes produce exhaust as hot as 930 degrees.

Costly infrastructure is necessary to cool down these exhaust streams so that amine-based carbon capture technology can work. 

Chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a porous material – a type of metal-organic framework – that can act like a sponge to capture CO2 at temperatures close to those of many industrial exhaust streams.  The molecular metal hydride structures have demonstrated rapid, reversible, high-capacity capture of carbon dioxide that can be accomplished at high temperatures.

Removing carbon dioxide from industrial and power plant emissions is a key strategy for reducing greenhouse gases that are warming the Earth and altering the global climate.  The captured CO2 can be used to produce value-added chemicals or can be stored underground or chemically-reacted into stable substances.

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Breakthrough in capturing ‘hot’ CO2 from industrial exhaust

Photo, posted March 3, 2010, courtesy of Eli Duke via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The bloated carbon footprint of LNG

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According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the United States is the world’s largest producer of natural gas.  In fact, natural gas supplies approximately one third of the United States’ primary energy consumption, most of which is used to heat buildings and to generate electricity.  While most natural gas is delivered in its gaseous form in this country, the demand for natural gas in international markets has given rise to the use of natural gas in a liquified form. 

Liquified natural gas (LNG) is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state, at about -260° Fahrenheit, for easier storage and transportation.  The volume of natural gas in its liquid state is about 600 times smaller than its volume in its gaseous state, which makes it possible to transport it to places pipelines do not reach.

Liquified natural gas is considered a clean fossil fuel because burning it produces less emissions than coal and oil.  However, according to a new study by researchers from Cornell University, LNG imported from the U.S. actually has a larger climate impact than any other fossil fuel—including coal – once processing and shipping are taken into account. 

The study, which was recently published in the journal Energy Science & Engineering, found that LNG leaves a greenhouse gas footprint that is 33% worse than coal when emissions are analyzed over a 20-year time frame. 

According to the research team, there is no need for LNG as an interim energy source because the transition requires massive infrastructure expenditures.  Instead, those financial resources should be used to “build a fossil-fuel-free future as rapidly as possible.”

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Liquefied natural gas carbon footprint is worse than coal

Photo, posted November 17, 2017, courtesy of Colin Baird via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Progress towards electric school buses

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The U.S. has nearly half a million school buses providing daily transportation for about 20 million students.  Most of these buses are powered by diesel engines which not only dump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere but also fill kids’ lungs with harmful fumes.

Thanks to various federal and state incentive programs, this situation is starting to change.  School districts all over the country are beginning to swap out old diesel buses for emissions-free electric-powered school buses.

Electric school buses are finding their way into school districts of all sizes and demographics.  The first district in the country to go fully electric was in Martinsville, Texas, which last year converted its 4-bus fleet.  The first large urban district to go all-electric was the 74-bus fleet in Oakland, California this summer.

The EPA’s $5 billion Clean School Bus program and many state initiatives are providing incentives for the transition.  Five years ago, there were less than 1,000 electric school buses in the U.S.  Now there are about 5,000 and more than 7,000 additional buses are in the pipeline.

Apart from the climate implications, there is urgency to replacing diesel school buses from a health perspective.  Diesel exhaust is classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization, and it contains fine particles and nitrogen oxides, both of which are well-documented asthma triggers.

Electric buses are more expensive than diesel buses, but they are much cheaper to operate. School districts need to put in place charging infrastructure.  The transition is not so easy to accomplish, but it is an important step, and more and more school districts are taking it.

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Slowly but Surely, U.S. School Buses Are Starting to Electrify

Photo, posted May 5, 2021, courtesy of California Energy Commission via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Slow-moving landslides

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Landslides are mass movements of rock, earth, or debris down a slope.  They can be initiated by rainfall, snowmelt, changes in water level, erosion by streams, earthquakes, volcanic activity, or by various human activities.  Most landslides we hear about are sudden events that can cause all sorts of calamities.  But not all landslides are rapid occurrences.  There are also slow-moving landslides.

A new study by the University of Potsdam in Germany has found that as urban centers in mountainous regions grow, more people are building homes on steeper slopes prone to slow-moving landslides.  Slow-moving landslides can move as little as one millimeter a year and up to as much as three meters per year.  Locations with slow-moving landslides can seem safe to settle on; in some cases, the movement itself can be inconspicuous or even completely undetected.

Slow slides can gradually produce damage in houses and other infrastructure and there can also be sudden acceleration from heavy rain or other influences.

The study compiled a new database of nearly 8,000 slow-moving landslides with areas of at least 25 acres located in regions classified as “mountain risk.”  Of the landslides documented, 563 are inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people.  The densest settlements on slow-moving landslides are in northwestern South America and southeastern Africa. 

In all regions of the study, urban center expansion was associated with an increase in exposure to slow-moving landslides.  As cities expand in mountainous areas, people are moving into unsafe areas, but poorer populations may have few other options.

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Slow-moving landslides a growing, but ignored, threat to mountain communities

Photo, posted March 4, 2015, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Cities and rainwater

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Cities across the country are grappling with the problem that bigger, more frequent rainstorms occurring as a result of climate change are overtaxing the systems put in place to handle stormwater.  Cities use a combination of so-called green infrastructure – such as rain gardens and porous pavements – and traditional gray infrastructure, such as pipes, tunnels, and pump stations.

In 2011, Philadelphia drew national attention for its Green City, Clean Waters program that was designed to manage the increasing amount of storm water using mostly green infrastructure.  Thirteen years later, the city is experiencing billions of gallons of polluted stormwater overflowing its sewage outfall pipes each year.  Green infrastructure is cheaper and faster to build, but it is not coping with increasing rainfall.

About 700 U.S. municipalities, mostly in the Northeast and around the Great Lakes, rely on these combined sewer systems.  Based on updated climate projections, many are having to greatly increase gray infrastructure projects that include concrete holding tanks, tunnels, and pipes that can divert and hold onto flows until the rain stops, and water treatment plants can recover.  These projects can take decades to implement and cost billions of dollars.

All across the country, cities are going to need to bite the bullet and make large-scale investments in conventional sewage infrastructure and repairs to stop billions of gallons of raw sewage from running into rivers.  The increased storms present a daunting challenge for America’s cities.

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Faced With Heavier Rains, Cities Scramble to Control Polluted Runoff

Photo, posted August 29, 2011, courtesy of Reggie via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A month of extra-hot days

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The past 12 months have been the hottest ever measured across the globe.  This may not be everyone’s experience in every location, but the average person on Earth experienced 26 more days of abnormally high temperatures than they would have in the absence of climate change.

Researchers considered a given day’s temperature to be abnormally high in a particular location if it exceeded 90% of the daily temperatures recorded there between 1991 and 2020.  Nearly 80% of the world’s population experienced at least 31 days of abnormal warmth since May of 2023.  Theoretically, the number of unusually warm days would have been far fewer in the absence of global warming.

In some countries, the extra-warm days added up to two or three weeks.  In others, such as Colombia, Indonesia, and Rwanda, there were up to 4 months of them. The average American experienced 39 days of extra-warm temperatures since last May.

Scientists also added up how many extreme heat waves the planet experienced since last May.  These are defined as episodes of unseasonable warmth across a large area, lasting three or more days, and causing significant loss of life or disruption to infrastructure or industry.  In total, the researchers identified 76 such episodes, affecting 90 countries, on every continent except Antarctica.

The world’s climate is now shifting toward the La Niña phase of the cyclical pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. This usually leads to cooler temperatures on average, but the recent heat could have lingering effects on weather and storms for months to come, including what is expected to be an extraordinarily active Atlantic hurricane season.

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Climate Change Added a Month’s Worth of Extra-Hot Days in Past Year

Photo, posted December 21, 2011, courtesy of Maggie Lin Photography via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Wind farms and land use

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Wind power has become one of the most affordable ways to generate electricity as well as being renewable and not contributing to global warming.  But there has been the perception that wind farms require a lot of land compared with fossil fuel power plants. This issue of land use has made decision-makers reluctant to invest in wind energy in many instances.

A new study by McGill University in Montreal looked at this issue and has found that land use for wind power is far more efficient than previously thought.  The study combined data from geographic information systems with machine learning models to assess land usage associated with nearly 16,000 wind turbines in the western U.S.

The study assessed the land use of 320 wind farms.  They found that wind power infrastructure (mostly the turbines themselves and the roads that lead to them) typically only uses 5% of the land area of a wind farm.  If the wind farm is sited in locations with existing infrastructure, such as on agricultural land, then it can be as much as seven times more land-efficient – meaning the amount energy produced in a given area of land impacted by the infrastructure – than a wind farm that is developed on unused land.

Previous studies of wind farm land usage assumed that all of the land where the wind farm was located was devoted to energy generation.  In reality, most of land in question is often used for other purposes, such as agriculture.

The methods developed by the researchers are potentially useable for future assessments of various energy technologies in terms of their environmental sustainability.

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Clearing the air: wind farms more land efficient than previously thought

Photo, posted September 29, 2009, courtesy of Tim Green via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The cost of methane emissions

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Stanford University-led research has determined that American oil and gas operations are emitting more than 6 million tons of methane each year.  The emissions come from both intentional vents and unintentional leaks. 

Methane is the main component of natural gas and losing that much of it through leakage is costing the industry a billion dollars a year just in lost revenue.  Adding in the harm to the economy and human well-being caused by adding this much potent greenhouse gas to the atmosphere is estimated to increase the cost of these emissions to $10 billion a year.

These emission and cost estimates are roughly three times the level predicted by the U.S. government.  The Stanford numbers are based on roughly a million aerial measurements of wells, pipelines, storage, and transmission facilities in six of the nation’s most productive oil and gas regions located in Texas, New Mexico, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Utah.  These areas account for 52% of U.S. onshore oil production and 29% of gas production.

The survey also found that fewer than 2% of the methane emitters are responsible for 50-80% of emissions in four of the regions.  It also found that midstream infrastructure – which includes gathering and transmission pipelines, compressor stations, and gas processing plants – is responsible for about half of total emissions.

While the federal government estimates that methane leakage averages about 1% of gas production, the new survey puts the number at 3%, and some regions lose almost 10% to leakage.

Better tracking and fixing these leaks – especially the larger ones –  is essential for climate change mitigation.

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Methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas operations cost the nation $10 billion per year

Photo, posted June 5, 2015, courtesy of Dave Houseknecht / USGS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Biochar and carbon

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Biochar is a charcoal-like substance that is made by burning organic materials like crop and forestry wastes in a controlled process called pyrolysis, which is burning in an oxygen-deprived environment.  Pyrolysis produces little or no contaminating fumes and results in a stable form of carbon that can’t easily escape into the atmosphere.  Biochar is a very efficient way to convert carbon into a stable form.

Adding charred biomass to improve soil quality has been done for thousands of years.  Indigenous people in the Amazon added charcoal, food residue, and other waste to their soil.  When mixed with soil, biochar creates favorable conditions for root growth and microbial activities, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions. 

Last year, 125,000 tons of carbon dioxide were removed worldwide in the durable carbon market, which is a carbon credit marketplace for carbon removal.  About 93% of that was in the form of biochar. 

Biochar represents a value-added way to deal with agricultural waste and also to make use of dead trees in forests that should be removed to lower the risk of wildfires caused by the presence of all that dry tinder material. 

A bill to fund biochar research is pending before the Senate Agricultural Committee.  It is a rare example of bipartisan legislation.

Biochar is currently expensive to make in the US because large amounts of biomass must be shipped to one of the fewer than 50 small-scale production facilities in the country.   But with appropriate infrastructure, biochar could play an important role in efforts to sequester carbon and combat climate change.

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Biochar Is ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ for Sequestering Carbon and Combating Climate Change

Photo, posted September 3, 2019, courtesy of Tracy Robillard / NRCS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The carbon footprint of urban agriculture

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Urban agriculture – essentially farming within a city – has become increasingly popular worldwide.  It is intended to make cities and urban food systems more sustainable.  There are social and nutritional benefits to urban agriculture, but its carbon footprint has not been widely studied.

There are high-tech, energy-intensive forms of urban agriculture, such as vertical farms and rooftop greenhouses.  But most urban farms are decidedly low-tech such as individual gardens managed by single farmers and community gardens managed by small groups of people.

A comprehensive international study led by the University of Michigan calculated the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the materials and activities of urban farms over their operating lives.  The emissions, expressed in the quantity of carbon dioxide equivalents produced per serving of food, were then compared to those of foods raised by conventional agriculture.

On average, food produced through urban agriculture emitted six times higher amounts of CO2 per serving than conventionally grown produce.

The study went on to recommend best practices crucial to making low-tech urban agriculture more carbon-competitive with conventional agriculture.  These include making use of infrastructure for more extended periods of time, making use of urban waste, and maximizing social and health benefits. 

Urban agriculture offers a variety of social, nutritional, and place-based environmental benefits and has its place in future sustainable cities.  It is important to implement it in ways that are most beneficial.

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Study finds that urban agriculture must be carefully planned to have climate benefits

Photo, posted July 27, 2016, courtesy of Sandra Cohen-Rose and Colin Rose via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Sponging up a river

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During the first week of February, an atmospheric river dumped enormous amounts of rain on Southern California.  Over the course of four days, Los Angeles received 9 inches of rain.  The average annual rainfall in the city is only 14 inches.

But Los Angeles was not the site of a flooding disaster because the city has spent years preparing for this type of deluge by becoming a “sponge city.”   By installing lots of green spaces and shallow basins with porous soil, Los Angeles was able to soak up 8.6 billion gallons of water during the storm, enough to meet the water needs of 100,000 people for a year.

Cities covered with impermeable concrete sidewalks and paved areas make storm-related flooding worse because they are unable to absorb water.  Instead, the water flows into drains and overwhelms infrastructure.

Natural materials like dirt and plants take in water from storms and can filter it into underground aquifer that cities can then tap into, especially during droughts.  Adding green spaces to cities has many other benefits beyond the ability to absorb large amounts of rainwater.

The so-called sponge-city movement is catching on in many other places.  Philadelphia is revamping its water systems in a 25-year project that includes green spaces to absorb stormwater runoff.  In China, the government has spent more than a decade adding spongy elements to dozens of cities around the country.

Sponge cities are part of a broader effort to combine modern engineering techniques with natural systems.  This is known as green-gray infrastructure.  Nature knows what it is doing when it comes to flood control as well as to pollution control.

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‘Spongy’ LA Soaked Up Tons of Water From Atmospheric River

Photo, posted December 28, 2011, courtesy of Ron Reiring via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

New York is raising its shoreline

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Superstorm Sandy in 2012 flooded 17% of New York City and caused $19 billion in damage.  In its aftermath, plans emerged to create floodwalls, raised elevations, high-capacity drainage, and other infrastructure to protect the city from future Sandy-like events.

Like all large infrastructure projects in densely populated places, the remaking of New York’s shoreline has only moved along in fits and starts.  But there has been significant progress.

The East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project is the largest urban resiliency project currently underway in the United States.  The first piece of it – the Asser Levy renovation – was completed in 2022.  Over the next three years, the $1.8 billion ESCR will reshape two-and-a-half miles of Lower Manhattan’s shoreline.  The ESCR is just one part of a much larger $2.7 billion initiative called the BIG U, which is a series of contiguous flood resilience projects that will create 5.5 miles of new park space specifically designed to protect over 60,000 residents and billions of dollars in real estate against sea level rise and storm surges. 

In a time of rising seas and increasingly powerful storms, flood-prone coastal U.S. cities – including Boston, Norfolk, Charleston, Miami, and San Francisco – are moving toward embracing the long-held Dutch concept of “living with water”, which emphasizes infrastructure that can both repel and absorb water while also providing recreational and open space.

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After a Decade of Planning, New York City Is Raising Its Shoreline

Photo, posted November 1, 2012, courtesy of Rachel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)